The dative personal pronouns are of the equivalent of words like “her” and “me” when used as indirect objects or after dative prepositions.

If you are unfamiliar with the four German grammatical cases we suggest you do the Accusative Articles and Dative Articles lessons first. The Dative Articles lesson also contains a brief explanation of indirect objects.

Like the other personal pronouns in German, the dative pronouns include a second-person plural pronouns, euch, which is similar to saying “you guys”, “you all” or “y’all” in English. The nominative version of this pronoun is ihr.

There is also a formal second-person pronoun, Ihnen, which is used like Sie from the nominative and accusative case for both the singular and plural “you”. Unlike Sie however it is not used as the third-person feminine pronoun. The word ihr is used instead for the equivalent of “her”.